Tencent Invests In VR Maker Skydance Media

Tencent Holdings is investing an undisclosed amount of cash in Skydance Media, a Hollywood leisure studio that makes every little thing from Terminator motion pictures to the Archangel digital actuality recreation.

Skydance Media was began in 2010 by David Ellison, the son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison. The firm has made function movies together with Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Terminator Genisys, World War Z, and Star Trek Into Darkness. Skydance movies have generated greater than $5 billion in field workplace revenues.

And in 2017, the corporate started branching out into video games with Skydance Interactive, with a concentrate on digital actuality. I not too long ago interviewed Skydance Interactive government vice chairman Chris Hewish about how Skydance is doubling down on VR.

“We are thrilled and honored to be coming into right into a strategic partnership with Tencent, whose international attain and place throughout the Chinese market is really unmatched”, mentioned Skydance CEO David Ellison in a press release. “Skydance has skilled an incredible quantity of progress since our inception in 2010, and we’re excited that our subsequent section of growth might be in partnership with an organization that shares our imaginative and prescient for the place leisure is heading.”

The funding is a part of a broader strategic partnership, which offers a world platform for project-level collaboration and also will enable Skydance to entry Tencent’s experience in Asia and gaming to additional construct out its presence in these markets.

Tencent will co-finance Skydance movies, and it’ll market, distribute and merchandise these movies in China. The partnership additionally helps collaboration on different media initiatives, together with tv, interactive and digital actuality.

“Skydance is nurturing profitable leisure franchises, particularly within the motion and science fiction genres, that are notably in style in China,” mentioned Tencent chief technique officer James Mitchell, in a press release. “We consider this partnership will help Skydance’s growth internationally, throughout media and into tv manufacturing, and supply Tencent with enticing content material that we are able to share with China shoppers.”

Skydance has made leisure in movie, TV, animation, and video games. The firm is at the moment in manufacturing on the brand new Mission: Impossible movie starring Tom Cruise, directed by Christopher McQuarrie; Gemini Man starring Will Smith, directed by Ang Lee; the following Terminator movie produced by James Cameron, directed by Tim Miller; the animated movie Luck, written by Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, directed by Alessandro Carloni; and the animated movie Split written by Linda Woolverton, directed by Vicky Jenson.

Skydance Interactive has about 70 folks, and so they’re all centered on VR titles, resembling Archangel, a mech-oriented VR title, and a VR model of The Walking Dead.